Tables Michael Built For The School

The tables that were haphazardly slapped together at the beginning of this year were so scary that I was constantly on edge, thinking they would break at any moment. These new tables that Michael just finished will be a hugely welcome upgrade. Just think, they actually have smooth surfaces, sturdy legs, and no nails! How magical!

Baby Snake I Caught One Day On A Walk

The Pets

For all you animal lovers out there,this blog's for you. Just wanted to share a couple pictures of the pets we've been caring for while the Sissons have been away. They have a cat named Frisky and a dog named Lulu. It's really fun because these two pets have grown up together so they are pretty good friends. Lulu LOVES chasing Frisky around. Frisky tollerates it pretty well. They're cute.

Lulu is a sweet and devoted dog,but far from being trained. She loves being wild, free, and filthy. She hates getting a bath. I have only attempted this feat once in the past couple of months and it was pretty funny. We had some of the young girls from the village over for the weekend and two of them wanted to help me wash Lulu. One girl held the rope while myself and the second girl hosed her off, lathered her up with shampoo, and started to rinse her. We had rinsed about half of the suds off of her before she got fed up with the whole situation. She did one quick twist and broke free from the girl who had been holding her. She got well out of reach and then instantly rolled and rolled in the sand. Crazy dog!

My favorite times with Lulu are those when she can be free, I am not trying to catch her, and I can watch her zany antics without having to smell her. I have been going on a lot of walks to the village lately for various Pathfinder errands. I always call Lulu so she can come with me. She LOVES going on walks. It's fun to have her with me too. She usually trots happily ahead of me at a fairly steady pace.But every now and then she hears something scurry through the bush and she plunges into the thick wall of jungle after it. She never catches anything,but she seems to get such pleasure from the thrill of the chase. She also adores the large mud puddles that dot the road. She races into them,biting wildly at the water as she goes. And of course if she gets too wet she rolls frantically in the sand afterward. Wouldn't want to get too clean after all! She makes me laugh.

Funny Moments

I have been a very happily married woman for over two years now. Somehow that doesn't really jive with the fact that I am quite on the undomestic side. It's not like I don't try, it just seems that certain womanly instincts don't come so naturally to me.

Here is a little story to prove my point.

Just after our Easter break, Andre and Natoya Knight (our married students from Barbados) would be coming back to campus with a baby girl. For their baby shower all the women on campus joined together to sew up quilt squares to make a tiny quilt for little Anna. My fellow missionary, Alexis, was in charge of the project and she asked me one day if I would like to make a square. I have never quilted in my life but I really like quilts, so I thought I'd give it a try.

Alexis explained how to do the most simple pattern she had, an easy checker patter. Two colors sewn every other. How hard could it be?

I had my three rows sewn together fine and I was feeling terribly proud of myself for getting so far with no major hiccups. All I had to do was to join those together in the same old manner. No problem, right? But let's not forget who it is doing the sewing. Somehow disaster struck when I mistakingly mixed up the first two rows I choose to connect. Of course I didn't catch my mistake and kept painstakingly stitching each square to its neighboing square. When I had completed my newly learned domestic feat I held up my handiwork to admire my job. I was horrified to discover my gruesome mistake. "Nooooooooo!!!"

There was no way on God's good earth that I was about to take it all apart and try again. I can't tell you how long it took me to get that much done. I had been staring so close at each little stick, trying so hard to get it right. These things do happen though... to me.

Almost imidiately after I kicked myself for making such an obvious mistake I noticed that my squares kind of looked like the cartoonish outline of an elephant. A new idea popped into my mind. Yes, I would turn it into an elephant!


P.S. I don't think my elephant looks as angry in real life as he does in this picture. :)

A New Line of Work at BeeMMC

Beecause there is always a need for things on campus that could help improve our lives in some way or serve as a means of income, Gilbert decided to try out bee keeping this year. Apparently bees can produce an easy gallon of honey about every two months. That would provide our
campus with a hearty amount of delicious honey and we would bee able to sell off some as well. It seemed to bee a pretty good thing to try, but as I mentioned earlier, Michael is the only one who sort of knows anything about bee keeping from some books he's read. So Gilbert basically put him in charge of checking on the bees and extracting their honey.

On the two occasions Michael has tried working with our little bees he has had disastrous results. The first time he was stalked by a puma, the second resulted in three stings on his left hand. He finally refused to touch those bees beefore Gilbert had purchased a proper bee suit. Gilbert finally got into town and bought a full bee suit and some heavy duty gloves so Michael could finally check on the honey situation.

There are two boys from the village who know how to extract the honey and said they would bee able to come help. So one day Myron, Joel, and Michael suited up and set out for the hive. Even though they smoked the hive thoroughly, the bees did not respond well to their home being taken apart. They swarmed pretty bad. Needless to say, Michael was extremely grateful for the bee suit.



They worked buzzily for some time beefore showing up in my clean kitchen to turn it into a wonderfully sticky mess during the actual extraction. Beecause the comb had been neglected for so long it was quite unorganized and didn't lend itself to a typical honey extraction situation. Instead of the gallon of honey that could have been, they scraped, squeezed and drained around two pints of honey from that comb. I've gotta tell you though, we've been eating a lot of honey ever since. It is so yummy on cornbread, toast, cereal, and pancakes. Yum! It is really nice. It is SO sweet. We're hoping to harvest one more time beefore we go home. Hopefully the comb will yield much more then.

Graduation

The weekend of the 14th was graduation here at BMMC. It was a touching ceremony with a message from the former president of the Guyana SDA Conference. He was pretty cool. Good stories. I was amazed at how many villagers from Bethany and Mashabo showed up to support the Graduates. After the ceremony we served some refreshments that ended up being a whole meal. It was really good! The whole event reminded me of my high school graduation. Everyone is having a fun time, thinking back on their year together, but feeling kind of antsy to leave and get on with life!

It's really neat because every year the Sissons set up a little stint of mission service for any of the graduated that are interested in some immediate experience. It's a nice way to get them out doing some independent work, away from the guidance of the school. This year almost every student and some of the staff went out for a couple weeks of service. When they return from that short term, many of them have also been placed in long term positions in various villages for the next year or so. It's really exciting to see the incredible motivation and energy these young men and women have to serve and teach others. I know they will all be successful in whatever they end up doing because every single one of them has a heart of strength and endurance.

I know my thoughts and prayers will travel with them as they strike out into a world thirsting for physical and spiritual healing. "Good luck graduates!"

Nighttime Adventure

One quiet night, after the whole campus was deep in slumber, I awoke to go to the bathroom. Though this is a common occurrence I have always absolutely loathed having to get out of my cozy bed just to go pee. The result is that I usually just lay in bed, putting off the inevitable as long as possible. So there I was, laying half awake in my bed when all of a sudden something happened that snapped me wide awake. The usual night sounds of the jungle (frogs, crickets, and the occasional bird) were overpowered by a new sound altogether.

The sound I heard was a low, deep, menacing rumble that sounded quite close. The instant I heard it my heart started racing as my thoughts reverted back a week or so ago to when I had heard the roar of a jungle cat thundering through the trees. It had sounded like an African lion at the time. I didn't even know pumas or jaguars could make that kind of noise! Nevertheless, now I was hearing it again, only this time it was a lot quieter, but also much closer!

Michael, who was sleeping peacefully at my side was oblivious to the little adventure I was having. I let him sleep. He didn't even stir as I launched myself out of bed and hurried quietly to the rail of our back porch. I peered eagerly out into the star-lit night, hoping beyond hope to catch a glimpse of the cat. I looked in every direction, but everything had quickly fallen back into the nightly routine, as if nothing had ever happened.

Sadly disappointed, I trudged to the toilet, relieved my weary body, and shuffled back to bed with one last glance out the window. Nothing. But no sooner had I crawled back in bed, tucked in my mosquito net, and laid back down then I heard the sound a second time! My heart picked up its tempo again, but this time I started to think things through a little more. Something, somehow was slightly different about the noise. I was definitely more awake now than I had been the first time and my sleepy brain was working overtime. I reasoned the sound out enough in my mind that I finally reached a startling, and rather embarrassing, conclusion.

This low rumble of a growl that I had heard twice now was not coming from outside at all. In fact, I realized, the noise was coming from our neighboring house, just a wall away, where Melissa's visiting mother was sleeping soundly. Yes, Barbara was snoring!

My discovery was confirmed just a moment later when I heard the sound again. Now that I had labeled the noise there was no mistaking it. It was indeed snoring. It had been so irregular, however, that it had me thoroughly convinced that my long awaited for jaguar was prowling around outside my house. I was glad Michael was asleep through all this. Though completely alone in my humiliation, I ducked a little deeper under the covers, feeling outlandishly sheepish about my mistake.

I have yet to see my jaguar.